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MacRonin sends us to the Washington Post for a story about the FBI's plans for a large biometric identification database. The Post also has a chart detailing the characteristics of the different methods of identification. We discussed the ethics of a similar situation a few months ago. Quoting the Post:
"Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law."

It really amazes me how everybody seems to think that more information is key, whereas I think that *better* information is key. Datamining really is an advanced way of searching for the needle in that haystack and if you throw tons of non-relevant data in there you've just made your job that much harder. The big trick is to try to increase the quality of the data without missing important bits. Trawling all the grandmothers credit card transactions is not going to increase the S/N ratio.

The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

Orwell was an optimist. The slide into complete loss of privacy, personal liberties, and any chance at atonement for making mistakes, intentional or otherwise, is far more insidious then he ever dreamed — and it is going to be far more complete than he imagined. Our country stands for nothing; we are powerless to change anything; the politicians and their lapdog agencies run rampant. I am ashamed.

From your post:

if you throw tons of non-relevant data in there you've just made your job that much harder.

The data is relevant, don't kid yourself. Your retina print, fingerprints, blood type, genetic details... what tracking these things in this way really means is a profound hardening of classes; felons will always be felons, that time you got caught throwing toilet paper on the courthouse will never, ever come off your record, your political affiliations in college will always, always constrain your future job opportunities and more.

A society that cannot forgive is a society that is lost, as far as I am concerned. A society that marks people specifically so that it can class them has reached the approximate social level of pond scum. There is little - if any - difference between the stars the Jews were forced to wear and a database that marks an individual for an infraction they have long ago atoned for. If the thesis is that one can never atone for an error, mis-step or intentional antisocial act, then it is flawed to begin with.

None of which will stop, or even slow down, this trend. When every liberty is up for trading in return for a claim of improved security, when every freedom is deemed too risky to the body politic, when every over-stated threat causes the public to whimper and keep their children locked inside, the Rubicon has well and truly been crossed. Felons! Terrorists! Pedophiles! Pornography! Drugs! None of these "threats" do a fraction of the damage as the "solutions" America has come to, and is working towards.

It is interesting to note that Total Information Awareness (TIA) components were well underway long before the events of 9/11/01 in America. Whether the FBI renames Carnivore to something else, the way the TIA was stealthily renamed and distributed (the illegal wiretapping of the nation within the first month of the Bush administration, the privatization of intel operations [now spread beyond 70 private contractors with online inputs to the Bushies], the privatization of Comsat leading to the National Applications Office, the final dot in the array - the use of satellites to spy overall on the American citizenry) among a variety of components, with inputs from NSA, NGA, etc., everything is now assembled and in place for TOTAL CONTROL. The Corporate Fascist State has won, end of story.....

"The data is relevant, don't kid yourself."For any specific purpose any piece of information is more or less relevant.

The problem with biometric data is that it isnt particularly unique. Biometry salesmen will try to convince you that their identifiers are special, but the fact of the matter is that evolution doesnt necessarily select for unique identifiers. We still have significant amounts of DNA in common with flatworms, nevermind other people.

DNA is as bad, the current theoretical best case is the equivalent of taking a the DNA variant of a dozen traits like hair color, height, skin color, etc. If you have a dozen such variables and calculate the number of possible permutiations you'll get a huge number. But these are not random numbers, they are selected for and match to a much larger than random extent within population groups. Get a large enough database and you will find matches. Take a sample from a hispanic and you'll get a dozen other his

"Furthermore, I dislike your analogy in that it suggests false positives for DNA fingerprinting are in any way, related to race."You're right, that was overly simplifying and skipping a number of steps. The more extensive reasoning goes like this; as subgroups and subcultures in urban settings often have a short and relatively close familial distribution these factors will strongly affect the statistical probability of matches within that subgroup. Not because of phenotype but because of close interrelation

Assuming he can be elected - which is a stretch - having gotten to the post, he'll be able to end the Iraq war. He'll be able to modify a fair amount of our foreign policy, this is an area that a president has a fair amount of autonomy in. However, with a comprised-as-usual congress and senate, most of the rest of the effect he will be able to have will consist of fireside chats with the public; even vetos will be easily defeated by politicia

So you know he's not electable, so what's the point of voting for him? Especially when you end with the line "Good for healthcare; bad for everything else."

The point of voting for him is to get the Iraq war over; to have a president that will engage the public in four years of constitutionally grounded dialog; to have a president that will act with honor and integrity; to have a president that will act to undo the executive orders that the previous ones have inflicted upon us; to have a president th

The funny thing is, the person who recommended Ron Paul actually believes that there is something called "democracy" operating in America today. Seriously, all elections, at least going back to Eisenhower, have been bought (probably even earlier, for all I know).

Now Joe Kennedy obviously purchased his son's presidential election utilizing the help of Mafia elements, Texas oilmen, etc., but John either didn't get the memo or ignored his father and worked primarily on behalf of the citizenry.

Please stop with the Ron Paul crap. The only thing I can figure about the Ron Paul fascination is that he is different and that is how far the bar has been lowered. He is not John Jackson or Jack Johnson (to quote Futurama), so people are flocking to him. The problem is, he is a die hard libertarian and naive to boot. Someone who believes that the government should be sold off in a fire sale because corporations with a profit-motive can provide those services cheaper and better is naive at best. Not th

I think real change will start with something very simple, no more campaign financing by corporations. Not a cent. Government for the PEOPLE.

So, the people that come together to form a business, or that dig into their wallets to help fund a business, or the people that decide to try to get a job from and end up working with that business, aren't the "PEOPLE"? Who are they, then? If you don't like the idealogical posture of a large business, just don't work there, and don't buy stuff from them.

Would you tell people giving you millions of dollars to stop it?... as long as I'm rich and my kids are rich, the country doesn't matter.

You realize, right, that the bookeeping of large, publicly traded corporations is (thanks to measures like SarbOx) under incredible public scrutiny? And that a public official doesn't just take a check from a company and deposit it in his personal account. Donations go to their campaigns - and those are in very small amounts (Exxon can't write a million-dollar check d

We already have term limits in the constitution. The problem is that dopey Americans continue to vote for the same losers and expect that "this time" it'll be different. Case in point was the last election where republicans got hit with their term limits and democrats were elected in to replace them, mostly by saying they would end the conflict in Iraq. Last time I checked , we're still in Iraq and most democratic voters think they are still getting good service from their representatives.

Someone who believes that the government should be sold off in a fire sale because corporations with a profit-motive can provide those services cheaper and better is naive at best.

Here's the deal. I support Ron Paul not because he would do any of that (He couldn't even if he wanted to because of congress) but he would most likley veto everything and cause a government shut down.

The problem is that congress simply passes laws non-stop without much reading or thinking about what they are passing. Doesn't mat

How can you be so sure that one's political affiliations "will always, always" have an impact on their life? To use such strong words one needs facts, and I am really sorry, but you don't have any.

Because they're looking to collect, and unify, all the information about each citizen. Fact: they're trying to use national ID cards to pin your identity down; Fact: they're trying to use databases to track your biometrics and link them to the cards; Fact: Our affiliations (political and otherwise) are being tracked by both government agencies and by commercial enterprises - and have been for years, just ask those poor bastards in 1950's Hollywood who got hauled up before McCarthy; this is nothing new. Fact: Watching these elections, what do we see but people's college behaviors and affiliations dragged up out of the blue? Hillary roomed with lesbians. Oooo! What about people who are trying to pursue normal lives and suddenly "wikipedia has a FELON as a CFO!", where the hell did that come from, and why is it even relevant? Did she screw up her work? No. Was she even accused of doing anything wrong? No. It's just past behavior being brought up to haunt current life and lock someone into a role they may very well have no part in. You can't be rehabilitated, you're low class and you will STAY low class. You don't think tracking is going on? Called Experian or one of its brethren lately? Seen your FBI file? Are you aware of the no-fly, no-buy, no-bank-account lists, all sans anything even remotely resembling due process? Think your email is private? When's the last time you transacted more than 10 grand at the bank? Do you realize that each of those transactions gets reported to the feds, and yes indeed, TRACKED? Talked to anyone overseas? Think that call wasn't monitored for keywords? Carnivore ring a bell? How about Echelon? Are you one of those clueless folk who think your SSN was used only for your retirement, as promised?

Buddy, the only reason you're "really sorry" is because you've got your head deep in the sand. But I agree, you are one sorry excuse for an informed person. You can fix it, though.

What's even worse, you base your argument upon speculation, which most of the time includes gross oversimplifications of societal matters.

No, I base my arguments upon facts in the record. Current and recent behaviors and data; basically ince3 the early 1900s until today, you can see all manner of problems that are government related. Everything I talked about there is objective fact. There's plenty more where that came from, too.

It is absurd to think that there is one unified entity which works toward a certain goal, and that entity includes everyone that is in charge of anything important for a society.

Yes. Why would you think that? Are you paranoid? It is a very large collection of traitors, bent upon sundering the constitution either knowingly or otherwise. They aren't an "organization", they are an unaffiliated collection of people with similar goals and similar methods. This doesn't make them any easier to deal with, in fact, it makes it considerably more difficult.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot one thing. "Orwell was indeed an optimist." I mean, come on.

You didn't "forget it", you just aren't together enough to see it. With your head as far in the sand as it is, this comes as no surprise. You should read 1984. Carefully. Then look around you and note the low level preparations going on. The camps [prisonplanet.com] built by the administration's bully-boys, Haliburton. The executive orders that revoke posse comitatus [concordbridge.net], you know about that, right? You know how the commerce clause has been mangled to mean "anything that COULD be be interstate comm

Hopefully you're trolling, but sadly a lot of people actually believe that.

What they fail to comprehend is that the "criminal" element is just as evenly dispersed among government jobs as among the rest of society. When you create a huge power differential between those holding certain government jobs and the rest of us, you are empowering the criminals on that side as well as the good people on that side.

This is what happens when you try to pre-assign people "goodness" ratings based on what job they hold. You end up with a subset of vastly overpowered criminals (granted power by the laws themselves) and no net decrease in what we commonly regard as criminal behavior (killing, theft, fraud, etc.).

The only sane way to assign arbitrary power to law enforcers is to maintain constant oversight of them, in a circular fashion -- the police watch the citizens, the citizens watch a police oversight body, and the police oversight body watches the police. That we neglect to do this is a serious mistake, and it results in a police force that behaves like it can get away with anything ethical or unethical (and often does).

What they fail to comprehend is that the "criminal" element is just as evenly dispersed among government jobs as among the rest of society.

As a member of the general public, I take umbrage with that statement. I'm convinced that there is a far greater representation of the criminal element in modern government (at least, in "elected" and appointed office) than in the rest of society. The same can be said of the business executive level.

When you create a huge power differential between those holding certain government jobs and the rest of us, you are empowering the criminals on that side

Exactly. And that is what I think attracts people with criminal tendencies to government office and to business executive. The power and potential rewards are so great as to act like a magnet to people with criminal tendencies.

This is definitely something scary. Many employers might require you to hand over your prints to the FBI - but at the same time, you don't exactly want government to have everything on you if haven't committed a crime.
Wasn't their a bill which was designed to prohibit enforceable gathering of biometric data by employers?

The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

You can get arrested for anything these days and now the FBI is going to become your employers watchdog? I've seen some dickish, big brother behavior since 9-11 but this tops the suck pyramid.

Yeah, and if you're arrested by mistake or acquitted after trial, no one will care. They'll just see some entry in the FBIs database and assume the worst. I think there should be some way that someone who's been falsely accused to get some compensation for not being able to work ever again. Let's face it, if you have any sort of criminal record - true or false - you can never get a job, loan, etc... your life is in effect ruined. And this database will make that much easier for it to be done.

The thing is, this is less about national security than it is about risk avoidance.

Companies that do business with people, and organizations that hire people, wish to avoid risk. In principle, this is just an extension of the way the American credit system works. There, your entire financial history is available to anyone that wants to decide if you can be trusted. It used to be, the deadbeat customer was a normal cost of doing business. In today's world, companies large and small have the credit bureaus to track us for them. However, at least there if you keep your nose clean and wait enough years, your past misdeeds will no longer haunt you. Expect that limit to be removed at some point, because obviously people that can't handle money well are threats to national security.

Make no mistake, the underlying sponsors of this unConstitutional boloney are corporate. From the extension of copyrights to longer credit histories to biometric tracking, this is all about the corporate world wanting to minimize its exposure to risk. The fact that it plays right into the hands of certain power hungry politicians and their appointed/unelected officials is just unfortunate for us.

You're rationalizing that "there should be some way to...". No. There shouldn't be a "way to.." This shouldn't even be necessary. This shouldn't even be happening. We have an election coming up in 2008. If we elect a leader instead of a scum-sucking politician, this project will be tabled. Forever.

Isn't this a classic definition of fascism ? I mean the government being a puppet of firm & corporation ? Because if I read that right, this more or less means the FBI suddenly become a special police specifically helping policing employee of corporation... I could be wrong on the definition, though...

Would this mean you can also see when your boss gets hauled up - even if no charges are brought, or he/she is acquitted?

First of all, it'll allow you to see, at the interview stage, if you'll be working for a bunch of crooks.
Second, if companies do start to take "brushes with the law" into account for career advancement, it sounds like a relative in law-enforcement could be the fast track to promotion.

You don't have to work for an employer who decides to use these new services offered by the FBI. That still meets your "survivability" criteria that you think I somehow neglected to take into account.

Sigh. Another "rugged individualist" who doesn't understand how careers work in the real world economy. For any kind of professional career, people have to train for years to get into it. Most industries are designed and regulated so that it is nearly impossible to break into them as an entrepeneur. If you weren't in the industry when it was new or being newly regulated (for example, you weren't alive then), you don't have much of a choice but to work for someone.

Also, real people, no matter who they are, are only good at a limited number of things. A person who is a whiz in chemistry may stink at things like real estate or home repair. You could start a home improvement company or become a real estate agent, but that's not really an option for most people. Plus, you would basically be asking someone like Einstein to drive a truck for a living (although people like you would probably get their jollies off of such a possibility).

The point you are missing is that a decent society does not make the options:
1. Work for FBI-shilling, oppressive company
2. Throw away years of education and expertise, and go work in some field that you are not very good at and that you hate
3. Starve

Chemistry is a good example of what I am talking about. It takes years and a ton of work to get a masters degree in chemistry. You don't have much choice but to work for one of the big companies. Even if you want to start up a small business in one of the chemical areas, you still need some years of experience in the field. Otherwise, you won't know how the real business works, you won't have any contacts to get your business going, and so on. This is true in most professional and technical fields.

Also, in cases like this in actual reality (as opposed to this bizarre one you have concocted from your imbecilic ideologies), there will be no employer that doesn't use and contribute to the FBI database. It will become an "industry standard" practice and there no company will see enough profit in not complying to justify abandoning (or never beginning) this practice. This sort of thing is common and only a drooling idealist would believe otherwise.

Clearly they are getting a headstart by treating all visitors to America as suspects: getting your eyes scanned and both index fingers printed is no kind of "welcome". A few years ago it was a completely different experience.

And this is exactly what bothers me so much about the U.S. government these days. I'm an American, and even though I don't know you I wish you could visit the country without be treated like a dangerous felon.

We (Americans) are really not all bad. As it turns out most of us dislike the current government, too. It's just that, well, we have a fairly large population of over-religious farmers who tend to vote for all the wrong people. And thus sh*t like this is allowed to happen.

And this is exactly what bothers me so much about the U.S. government these days. I'm an American, and even though I don't know you I wish you could visit the country without be treated like a dangerous felon.

Well, there is a philosophical conflict raging here. There's obviously people who want to get into the US to perform terrorist acts. This leaves us with 3 choices:

1. Screen every visitor carefully

2. Screen only "suspicious" people (profiling based on religion, etc. and is often considered "racist".)

Other countries don't have terrorist problems (yet), and so they don't have to perform intrusive procedures.

Under what rock have you been living?

I am not convinced that we are any less safe now then we were a decade or so ago, just much more paranoid. It really says something when a nation of immigrants is deceived into thinking they need to bar foreigners.

Quote: Other countries don't have terrorist problems (yet), and so they don't have to perform intrusive procedures.

Well, there's a gap between reality and politicians' view of this issue... Take for example Germany - our minister of internal affairs keeps insisting in the terrorist threat, calling for impressive plans of data retention, which is NOT directed against any foreign travelers, but the WHOLE of German inhabitants...

A philosophical conflict? How about a conflict of overdramatized, highly unlikely fearmongering juxtaposed against the loss of civil liberties? The latter seems to be the specific problem.

Living freely includes risk. The problem here is that many people have little or no understanding of the freedoms they had, how hard they were fought for and how unusual it is that they had them in the first place. Most troubling is the fact that they had no clue how easy it was to lose them, and now that they have been lost, recovery is much, much more difficult.

As far as I am concerned, when a criminal - be they terrorist, mugger or politician disobeying the constitution - commits an antisocial act, that criminal should be held accountable for that crime. If the crime is large, the accounting should be large. If society can accept that the crime has been atoned for, then the criminal should get a fresh start. If society cannot accept this, then the criminal should be either put to death or imprisoned permanently. In no case should bystanders or citizens not even involved on any level be inconvenienced by actions nominally taken to ameliorate the criminal act. Sure, this approach involves risk. I prefer the risk. We are a better people when we accept risk in exchange for liberty than when we trade liberty for any illusion of safety gained by treating everyone as if they were a potential criminal.

It doesn't work for hardly anyone. I was talking about after-the fact. There is no after the fact for a suicide bomber; but even for a murderer that is reformable - it still doesn't undo the murder. States with death penalties for murder still see murders. So clearly, prevention isn't being accomplished, and it is pointless to even try to look at crime in the sense of prevention at the punishment end.

Over here in the United Kingdom we've had terrorist problems since the 1970s. We've also had a few attacks in the past few years, and the police and security services claim to have prevented several more. We don't fingerprint and iris scan visitors as a matter of course.

Over here in the United Kingdom we've had terrorist problems since the 1970s. We've also had a few attacks in the past few years, and the police and security services claim to have prevented several more. We don't fingerprint and iris scan visitors as a matter of course.

One thing to remember is that in the days of the cold war it was the free west vs. the "guilty until proven innocent" east. Policies that get implemented these days in western countries would never have been suggestable 30 years ago, as things like finger printing all visitors would have been something those dirty commies did!

Hi,Don't worry, I can tell the difference between individual Americans and the US govt!

My major client is a large US investment bank and has been for over a decade. American individuals and corporations are fine (well I guess I've met a few bad ones, but in fact mainly of non-US origin strangely), but the 'security theatre' rhetoric of marking all foreigners as potential rapists^Wterrorists is just stupid and pisses off natural friends of the US.

It's just that, well, we have a fairly large population of over-religious farmers who tend to vote for all the wrong people.

That's funny, every demographic I've ever seen says that between 1 and 2 percent of the US population either lives on a farm or considers farming their occupation. One to two percent of the population has very little sway over the outcome of our national elections.

You go ahead and keep telling yourself that "it's some farmer in the midwest" screwing it all up, though; especially the next time you drive through Florida.

Right now on the US National political scene, it would seem that the default "heir" to the Bush/Cheney ideology of fear is Rudolph Giuliani. What city was he mayor of, again? Are there a lot of farmers living in Manhattan?

Oh wait, I must have been confused; it's Illinois where a lot of farmers live, and their state has given us Senator Obama in the Presidential contender line-up.

Please, if you're going to generalize about the American population, try to generalize in a way that makes sense. Here you're telling our foreign friend "hey look, we Americans are cooler than we might appear", yet then you generalize about "farmers". Nice.

I live in a suburban area, and work in a high tech field, and know very few people who revealed their political feelings in the last 2 presidential elections that did NOT vote for Bush. I'd say I probably know 50 people who revealed their political leanings, and 48 were for Bush.

That's funny, every demographic I've ever seen says that between 1 and 2 percent of the US population either lives on a farm or considers farming their occupation. One to two percent of the population has very little sway over the outcome of our national elections.

Allow me to add to your merriment with the following Two Fun Facts:

1. The majority of Slashdot users are American born.2. The majority of those born in the US and of voting age do not understand their voting system.

You go ahead and keep telling yourself that "it's some farmer in the midwest" screwing it all up, though; especially the next time you drive through Florida.

Funny, I live in Florida. In 2004 52% voted for Bush vs. 47% for Kerry, and that was three years ago. Since then Florida's alignment has moved into Blue territory, at least among the people who actually vote.

Also, for future record, Giuliani does not appeal to New Yorkers. He appeals to those who felt they identified the most with Bush last time. New

The solution to the over-religious farmer problem is to focus on enabling voters. Designating election day as a national holiday is an obvious and easy start, but even then, poorer counties seem to always encounter longer lines of people wanting, yet not getting to vote.
If the progressives could build a movement around enabling voters, they would certainly gain on the number of voters controlled by the religious right.

The Japanese government is even worse. They now fingerprint, photograph, and question visitors and returning residents not only when they first enter the country, but again during all subsequent re-entries [debito.org] . And this is in addition to the mandatory re-entry permits (3000 yen fee!), mandatory registration of non-citizens at their local city hall, and mandatory carrying of Alien Registration Cards on one's person at all times. Don't think you're free to wander about the country after your ordeal with immi

This, [eggmann.blog.is] while maybe exageratted(probably not, but I have to give the benefit of the doubt as this is just a one sided view) makes me very sad to live here. The spirit of the law is a dream of the past.

Actually we're more likely to ee silly walks outlawed.If you're walking unusually, you must be doing it to throw off the tracking software, and if you're trying to throw off the tracking, then you must be intending to commit a crime, citizen.

I actually worked a bit on some of the theory behind gait recognition when I was a student. Interesting from a technical perspective but scary as hell in terms of what it could be used for. Other than the obvious of course. The classic example of legitimate use is a ban

10 year contracts are not common for software projects in the federal government. 10 years of engineering and support is a serious undertaking by a major federal agency. Taking this down will require a similarly serious effort if people are serious about pursuing that.

I use a toothbrush myself. Anyway, does this mean you are suspect if you ever stopped by a cop? So much for this actually being guilty of anything, now it's just if you are even questioned. I'm not sure who's worse, the employers or the gov't. Either way, you all still have a chance to make a change, until after the primaries. Don't lock yourselves in.

you will find that the majority of americans won't be disturbed by this. there are some who will use this as proof that most americans are morons. as if insulting the average citizen is supposed to win you any points in the battle against big/ intrusive government, oh great genius?

no, the average american won't care, because the average american, when given news like this, doesn't see a big downside to this. when told the downside to this as displayed here in some posts, they will think the average slashdot poster has been watching too many paranoid hollywood movies

The average person will simply think the government is doing more to look out for *them*.

A few false arrests and multi-year imprisonments because of a software bug or flaw in the biometric database? Just the price to be paid for security.

That particular way of thinking sickens me, but it's quite prevalent. Many people (my mother included) would far rather see 10 innocents imprisoned than one guilty man go free. Because they're terrorists or something.

I try to explain that I know have Iranian family on my father's side and next time it could be me that's falsely accused of associating with and aiding people (incorrectly) thought to be terrorists. But that doesn't seem to get through, that there could ever be a mistake. Somewhere in the back of a lot of folks minds there's this strong conviction that mistakes like that just don't happen, despite multiple high profile examples to the contrary, and even if they do, it doesn't matter because they don't think it can happen to them. Because why would it? I'm a good person, why would the government arrest me?

At that point I usually give up trying to argue and go back to mourning the state of the world. No, it doesn't win me any points, realising that the average person is about as questioning of authority as a faithful puppy, it is unfortunately the true state of the world though.

of equal import, which escapes you and the majority of paranoid posters you will find in this thread, is that blind distrust is equally moronicthe american government is not satan incarnate. it is also not the paragon of virtue. it is mostly bumbling bureaucrats who mean well

so when people go at the american government like they are talking about a sneaky evil out to enslave all of mankind, they sound like retarded matrix fanboys, not intelligent wary citizens out protecting our freedoms

"the american government is not satan incarnate"And nowhere did I say it was.

"it is also not the paragon of virtue. it is mostly bumbling bureaucrats who mean well"

Agreed, partially. It's also made up of people who specific moral agendas and biases, prejudices and (worse, IMHO) those who are willing to sell out the people they are representing for their own political, social or financial gain.

"so when people go at the american government like they are talking about a sneaky evil out to enslave all of mankin

Privacy advocates worry about the ability of people to correct false information. "Unlike say, a credit card number, biometric data is forever," said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology forecaster. He said he feared that the FBI, whose computer technology record has been marred by expensive failures, could not guarantee the data's security. "If someone steals and spoofs your iris image, you can't just get a new eyeball," Saffo said.

That's the thing, mistakes are made and if the Government starts acting

I guess since the FBI has previously demonstrated its prowess in implementing technology projects, with (inter alia) the Virtual Case File fiasco, and the SirCam infection of their National Infrastructure Protection Center, it's time for them to move on to a higher level.
It's good to know we can still count on the Peter Principle.

The same FBI that couldn't put together an email system in 2 years with a few hundred million bucks. The good news is BIG BROTHER isn't competent, the bad news is that he has no idea he isn't competent. The big problem with that is that he carries a gun, and because the people he deals with on a regular basis are the only people in the world even more brutally stupid than he is, he never figures out he's a little slow.
If it can be abused it will be. I bet the false positive ratio will be greater than 1000 to 1 with this baby. It won't catch many, if any, bad guys, but it will result in countless innocent people being "interviewed" by Bubba the $9 an hour security guard at the airport.
Good luck with that. Time to leave the USA. The fascists have won.

Using biometric data is a dangerous road IMHO. If biometric authentication is performed under very tightly controlled conditions then it may be difficult to spoof but the more widespread it becomes the less controlled the conditions will be (the more people involved the higher the chance of stupid people overseeing the process). You can tighten up a server. even Windows (-; so that it is very difficult to penetrate, but when you have billions of I.T. admins running servers you're going to have some looseni

There is an open alternative to this kind of biometric snooping: CheapID. It's a digital identity standard, and a protocol for having a court order be required before the police, or other government agencies, could run a biometric search on the Big Database. It enforces that standard by moving the Big Database to an international level, but encrypting the metadata attached to each record - including fields like name - in a way which means the people with access to the database can't *do* anything with it, because there is no information about *people* in the database (like names,) only information about their physical bodies. Data stripped of metadata is largely worthless, and to unstrip an item needs a court decrypt from a national government.

This paper shows how we can manage large scale biometrics databases and increase the amount of privacy we have from government snooping while still having a secure society.

The basic crux of this paper is that you can separate the biometrics database, which simply identifies your physical body, and isn't necessarily any more intrusive than Flickr or any other online photo sharing site, and the reputation database, which stores things like your credit rating, any criminal record, and the suspicions of various government agencies about your intentions.

So when you do something like rent a car, you give them a token which has your face on it. They match your face to the token, and say "ok, this token is valid." But the token doesn't have your name, or your SSN, or anything else on it: it's totally sterile. But if you steal the car, they take the token to court, as well as the proof you gave it to them, and the court uses the token to get your name, SSN and other details.

If all that FBI or other government biometrics database stored was tokens, and it required a court order to go from a match in the biometrics database to a name and street address, I think we'd have a fair balance between civil liberties and security. A database of pictures of faces or fingerprints is not the intrusive part: it's the connecting of your face or your fingerprint to your background that is the intrusion, and we can separate the two databases and require a court order (and a crypto key) to reconnect them.

Cheap DNA scanners are coming. We've have to fix how we handle biometric data as a society before they arrive.

I had to go to New York on family business in 2006. The US requires you to leave fingerprints at the airport. And even though it is very easy nowdays to fool fingerprint scanners, I didn't want to risk something like this and be thrown out the country. And since US government agencies are very "open" about their data (any person posing as a business that needs to screen potential employees can get extensive background information), I used to worry about the fact that any idiot can now download my fingerprin

I've just finished some building work on my house. Some of the time I was wearing industrial thickness gloves, and sometimes not. As a result my fingers are now quite rough, with worn parts, small scratches and the like.

If someone was to take my fingerprints now (either with permission or against my will) and record them as "mine", what would be the situation when my hands healed? Would I forever be denied access to me because of the discrepancy, or would there be two me's, with different fingerprints - b

The fact that the biometric data is stored on the chip in the passport does not mean it can be accesses or reproduced.

Look at chip credit cards. You cannot retrieve a PIN from them, even though an encrypted and hashed version resides on the chip. You can't even get the hash; just an answer, yes or no, whether what is presented is correct or not. I would presume that any sensible passport scheme would be much the same. Am I wrong?

The summary is 99% vaporware. The FBI people that are spending the money on this boondoggle are over promising on a big IT project. It's not going to work out the way everyone thinks it will. I replied before I checked if anyone from the biometrics industry replied, so hopefully I'm repeating what they said.1. Data isn't shared or otherwise capable of being shared. Biometric systems from the gui all the way back to the template that's stored is proprietary. Short-story, biometric systems are a GIANT bl

Haven't you guys read 1984 or Brave New World? Be thankful that is not the world we live in today!

No, more like...
A.E. van Vogt, Computerworld, 1983 (... the story of our world under the cold and emotionless eye of the almighty computers...(not brilliant, but rather anticipatory and fits in here))

This could be good. It will demonstrate how useless "biometrics" are for identifying an individual from a set of millions. All biometrics used in these identity databases are reduced from actual photographs and measurements and represent lossy compression. As soon as you have lossy compression, you can have many to one mappings that make the usefulness for identity checks limited.

It is indeed usually futile to do raw searches based on such info, but if you combine multiple factors from other sources (empl

Don't worry, the Ron Paul internet zombies have all kinds of talking point rebuttals to that. Some crap about how taking their money is the ultimate insult - maybe someone should tell that to all those industry groups and lobbyists in DC.

I wonder how well it would go over if he took money from radical Islamic fundamentalists.